They never left her apartment that day.
Not once.
Not for air, sunlight, food that required leaving the bed, or any of the small human excuses people use to pretend the world still exists outside four walls.
The Void Towers could have crumbled into the river below and Phei wouldnât have noticed until the debris hit the mattressâand even then heâd have asked for five more minutes with her thighs wrapped around his ears.
Patricia Bloom declared it twice.
Once in the late afternoon, voice wrecked to gravel, face mashed into a pillow that still smelled like his shampoo, body shaking from something that had started as a lazy kiss on her shoulder and ended with her sobbing his name into navy sheets soaked dark with sweat and everything else.
"Best day,"
she rasped, barely audible.
"Best fucking day of my life."
Again, at nightâquieter, softerâcurled against his chest on the sectional while Hell River glowed beyond the glass like liquid fire, takeaway containers scattered across the coffee table like casualties of a very well-fed war.
"Best day," she murmured against his collarbone, lips brushing skin. "Best day of my entire life."
He just pulled her closer. Kissed the top of her head.
Let the silence answer for him.
The next day they actually left.
Another
proper date
.
Sunlight.
Fresh air that didnât taste like sex.
They walked along the river sheâd stared at for years from floors up but never once touched.
He watched her kick off her sandals, step into the shallows, and freeze when cold water hit her anklesâeyes going wide, young, startled, like the river had just whispered her real name for the first time.
He filed that expression away in the vaulted part of his brain reserved for things worth protecting forever.
They ate somewhere small and quiet. Talked about nothing that mattered. Laughed at things that werenât funny.
Came back to the apartment.
Didnât leave again until morning.
Three days.
Three days in a dark-blue apartment on the twenty-seventh floor of the Void Towers with a woman whoâd started as his chemistry teacher and ended as something he didnât have a clean word for yet.
On the second day, her phone buzzed.
She picked it up. Frowned. Tapped the notification.
Then went very, very still.
"Phei."
"Mmm?"
"Why did your aunt just add me to a group chat calledâ" She squinted at the screen. Read the name.
Taboo Harem?
Went pink from collarbones to hairline in under three seconds.
Phei didnât look up from the book heâd pulled off her shelf.
"Welcome to the family."
The messages were already flooding in.
Sierra:
YOUâVE HAD HIM FOR TWO DAYS, TEACHER???
Maddie:
Two days. TWO. Some of us are literally starving over here.
Melissa:
Patricia. Welcome. Now send him home before these girls burn my penthouse down.
Patricia stared at the screen. Read every message they sent afterwards. Read them again... as Delilah joined the battle for Phei Rights!
Then pressed the phone face-down on the nightstand, buried her face in his chest, and made a small, muffled sound that was half mortification, half delighted panic.
"Theyâre terrifying," she said into his shirt.
"You get used to it."
"Do you?"
"No."
She laughedâsmall, flustered, delighted despite herself.
The blush hadnât faded.
Now a parent/guardian and her students knew she was fucking her student!
If anything, the blush just deepened, spreading down her neck and across her shoulders like a sunburn earned entirely from embarrassment and the sudden, dizzying realisation that she was now
part
of something.
Something real.
Something that had a group chat and apparently no chill.
On the third day from the very night heâd claimed his woman,
Main Paradise woke up.
The strange, breathless lockdown that had settled over the community after his awakeningâthe pause where no one quite knew what rules still appliedâlifted like fog burning off the river.
Gates opened.
Cars moved.
The machinery of wealth, power, and carefully maintained appearances ground back to life.
Ashford Elite Academy was on a sudden
weekâs holiday
.
Dravennaâs decreeâno explanation offered, none required.
When the Dean said the school was closed,
you said yes maâam
and found something else to do with your week.
Students scattered to mansions and islands.
Staff exhaled.
Campus went ghost-quiet.
The girls had stayed home.
Maddie went to the penthouse. Spent her days with Melissaâthe three of them with Delilah in the particular harmony Phei still found slightly surreal.
His women:
his aunt, cousin and woman!
The bright chaos and the composed steel. They cooked together. Talked about things he wasnât privy to.
Laughed at jokes heâd never hear.
Melissa had taken to Maddie the way a
lioness
takes to the
cub
that refuses to stop climbing on her headâ
exasperated, fond, protective in a way sheâd deny if asked.
Delilah and Sienna had Victoria. The three sisters in Victoriaâs space, navigating the strange new terrain of their relationships without Phei there to anchor them while Maddie joined in at times.
He didnât know exactly what they talked about. Didnât ask. Some things needed room to breathe without him standing in the middle.
Sierra stayed home.
Her parents still hadnât
approved.
Not the relationship exactlyâbut the
shape
of it.
The harem.
The arrangement that had gone from whispered rumour to open scandal across Main Paradise in weeks.
It was one thing when their daughter dated the mysterious boy whoâd turned into a god overnight and made every head at Ashford swivel.
It was another
when they learnt that the boyâs harem included
his aunt, his cousin
, andâas all of Main Paradise now knewâ
Maddie
.
They didnât know about the rest. Didnât know the boy their daughter loved had fucked one of the Paradise
Empresses.
And that Dragoness of Ashford herself was his
Mate.
If that particular detail ever hit the gossip channels, Paradise wouldnât just talkâit would
detonate
.
But the harem they
did
know about was scandalous enough.
The sheer magnitude.
Not just multiple womenâwhich Paradise could tolerate quietly behind closed doors, the way it tolerated everything else that contradicted its polished surfaceâbut the
nature
of them.
His
aunt.
His
cousin.
The
taboo
of it.
The brazen, unapologetic reality that
Phei Ryujin Tiamat
was building something that broke every rule Paradise had spent centuries pretending to uphold.
Phei didnât give a shit what other families thought.
But he gave a shit about Sierraâs parents.
He gave a shit because Sierra gave a shit. Because the girl whoâd chosen himâwhoâd fought for him, whoâd stood beside him when standing beside him meant standing against her own familyâs comfortâdeserved not to be torn in half.
So, when their butler calledâ
formal, polite, the carefully neutral tone of a household that had decided to address the situation like civilised people
âand
invited him
to dinner at the estate, with Melissaâs presence required as his legal guardianâ
He said yes.
In the
next few days
, he was going to sit across a table from Sierraâs mother and father, look them in the eye, and make his case.
Not for permission. He wasnât asking permission.
But for understanding.
For the chance to show them that what he was building wasnât chaos dressed up as loveâit was something theyâd never seen before, it was real, and their daughter was safe inside it.
Melissa would be there as theyâd asked. Composed. Commanding.
In just a few days.
But for now, there was something
more interesting.